


a royal affair

by JenTheSweetie



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: F/F, F/M, Gen, it's not really the point, minor Valkyrie/Loki, this takes place in a universe where the movie "clueless" exists
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-26
Updated: 2020-03-26
Packaged: 2021-02-28 20:33:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,335
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23323240
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JenTheSweetie/pseuds/JenTheSweetie
Summary: Valkyrie doesn't expect to get along with Loki. Frankly, once she finds out he's alive, she expects to have to duel him to the death. Shereallydoesn't expect tolikethe son-of-a-bitch.
Relationships: Brunnhilde | Valkyrie & Loki & Thor (Marvel), Brunnhilde | Valkyrie/Loki (Marvel)
Comments: 13
Kudos: 133





	a royal affair

**Author's Note:**

> Snapjack had a birthday, and as we do each year, we exchanged fics instead of presents. Thank you for the prompt and for being born. Hope all of you are staying healthy, safe, and sane.

When Thor showed up eight months into her reign pulling his lying snake of a brother along by his ear, Valkyrie knew exactly what to say:

“No.”

“Valkyrie,” Thor said. “Can we - ”

“I’m not keeping him,” Valkyrie said. 

“But if we _talked_ about it - ”

“It’s not happening.”

“Thor, could you just,” Loki said, shoving at his brother’s muscly arm, “honestly, this is unnecessary - ”

“It’ll be temporary,” Thor said, ignoring Loki.

“Very temporary,” Valkyrie said. “No more than five minutes, I should think.”

“ - and if you would just _release me -_ ”

“Slightly less temporary than that,” Thor said. “Consider it a personal favor.”

“Thor, I’ve done a lot of favors in my life, and I know exactly where my line is drawn. It’s right here. Right in front of Loki. Who’s supposed to be _dead_.”

“Yes, well,” Thor said grumpily.

“Details,” Loki sighed.

“Shut up,” Thor snapped, but released his brother’s ear.

Loki rubbed the side of his head, putting on the airs of someone who had been tortured but borne it heroically. “Finally.”

Valkyrie looked between them, feeling almost as unimpressed as the time Korg accidentally knocked over his own hut while trying to attract the attention of a small bird. “I don’t know where you found him and I don’t care what you do with him, but he’s not staying here.”

“I,” Thor said, pulling himself up to his full height, “was once,” he hesitated, “the king of Asgard, you know,” he finished, lamely, as Valkyrie slowly raised an eyebrow.

“And now I am,” Valkyrie said simply. 

Thor deflated. “I don’t have anywhere else for him to go.”

Loki crossed his arms over his chest. “I don’t need your charity, brother. I never asked you to track me down and drag me home, I’m not a _child_ , I can handle my own affairs - ”

“He owes some very bad people a very large sum of money,” Thor translated. “There’s a bounty on his head and this is the last place anyone would expect to find him.”

“Yes, what kind of idiot would bring him to New Asgard?” Valkyrie said.

“Just give me three months to sort it out,” Thor said.

“Why doesn’t he just fake his death again?” Valkyrie suggested.

“That’s precisely what I said!” Loki said, which earned him a glare that warned of thunderstorms ahead. 

“It would be a debt I could never repay,” Thor said gravely, and that was when he got her, because the thing was that Valkyrie knew all about debts that could never be repaid. In fact, she’d spent most of her life trying to repay them.

She narrowed her eyes at both of them. “I’m going to regret this, aren’t I.”

Thor beamed. “In all likelihood, yes.”

“Yes, I can’t argue with that,” Loki said.

-

After they’d found Loki an unoccupied home and Thor had gone back off into space with those friends of his who flew that ugly orange ship, Valkyrie marched herself straight into the disgraced prince’s living room and said, “Are you ready to hear the ground rules?”

Loki looked up at her from where he was draped in an Ikea chair. “I’m on the edge of my very uncomfortable seat.”

“First of all, you’re here as a guest, not a resident, and that means I can throw you out at any moment, for any reason,” Valkyrie said. “Next, you’re not to go anywhere near the Midgardians; they tolerate us, but I highly doubt they’d be charmed to know they’re living just up the road from you. And finally, don’t bother looking for anything valuable to steal, because we haven’t got anything. And if you bring any chaos whatsoever into my kingdom,” she said, stepping forward until she loomed over him, “I will do much worse to you than drag you home by the ear. Do we understand each other?”

“Perfectly,” Loki said coolly. 

She stared at him.

He stared back.

“Good,” she said, and slammed the door behind her.

-

He didn’t leave his house for three days. Valkyrie wondered what she’d say to Thor if he came back and it turned out his brother had slipped in the shower.

-

On the fourth morning, Valkyrie was sharpening her favorite sword on a grindstone when Loki snuck up behind her.

Well. He _tried_ to sneak up behind her. It was almost sweet, really. Children could be so funny. “Come up with your next wily scheme, have you?”

Loki paused, and Valkyrie glanced at him over her shoulder. “Just looking for a bite to eat.”

“Looking to steal it, I presume.” She opened her bag and tossed him an apple. “People here work for their food, if you can imagine it.”

“You forget that I spent time on Sakaar,” Loki said. 

“Yes, I heard you worked _very_ hard to earn your place in the Grandmaster’s chambers,” Valkyrie said dryly.

“Well, nothing comes for free,” Loki said, and took a bite of apple. “Is it just fishing, then? That’s your primary industry?”

“Some people drive lorries,” Valkyrie said. “There’s construction work. And of course the elders maintain the scrolls. Well, they’re blogs now, but you know what I mean.”

“Praise the Allfather that Frigga passed from this world to the next without witnessing this,” Loki said with a shudder. 

“So what will it be? There’s openings down at the docks today, a couple of kids left with Thor so there’s plenty of work.”

Loki looked faintly astonished. “You can’t possibly think I’d work at a _dock_.”

“I think you will if you don’t want me to call up all those bounty hunter friends I made during my scrapper days and tell them I found the prince of Asgard tied up and shoved in a bin behind the fishery.”

“It’ll never happen,” Loki said, and took another bite of his apple. 

Or at least he thought he did; Valkyrie got there first and snatched it away. “If you don’t work, you don’t eat,” she said.

“That wasn’t how it worked on Asgard.” 

“Well, this isn’t Asgard, is it,” Valkyrie said. 

Loki’s face got very pinched when he was being defiant. He must, Valkyrie thought ungenerously, have been a very unattractive child. 

“Very well,” Loki said, and turned on his heel and walked away.

-

Valkyrie spent the night wondering how long it would be until she caught him stealing from someone. She’d have to bend him over her knee and spank him, and she wasn’t looking forward to it.

Mostly.

-

And then the next morning, she made her way down to the docks and found Loki lifting up a crate of fish that smelled like they’d already been lying in the sun for a week in summer. He was wearing galoshes (galoshes!) and had his hair pulled back in a little topknot. 

She did not, for the record, bother to stop herself from laughing out loud. It was one of the many benefits of being in charge.

Once she’d finished laughing, she picked up the next basket of fish and dumped it into the crate. “So you decided you’re hungry.”

“I was sick of staring at the television,” Loki said. “Midgardian entertainment is remarkably tiresome. Much like Midgardians themselves.”

“They’ve been very gracious hosts,” Valkyrie said.

“Well, they didn’t have much choice, did they? _Yes, hello, we’re gods and we’d like to take over a bit of your planet if it wouldn’t be too much of a bother_. You could have had the whole thing if you’d wanted it.”

“Well, that’s the difference between you and I, Loki,” Valkyrie said. “I didn’t want it.”

Loki glared at her, then pressed his lips together and got back to work.

-

The Asgardians generally gave Loki a wide berth - he hadn’t been particularly popular even _before_ he’d taken the place of their beloved king, wreaked havoc on their homeworld, and faked his death in their hour of need - but Korg, who had no personal beef with the prince, pretty much just seemed happy to have a replacement for Thor.

“Korg,” Valkyrie heard Loki said tiredly as she approached Loki’s hut one afternoon, “how many times do I have to tell you I don’t want to play?”

“I think you’d like it,” Korg said. “It’s kind of like the Grandmaster’s tournament but with less real death, and you didn’t seem to mind that part anyway.”

“Well, I didn’t have much of a choice, did I,” Loki said. 

“You had a bit more choice than I did, seeing as you were not technically a slave,” Korg pointed out. “Come on, I brought my second favorite controller for you.”

“I figured you’d be looking for entertainment after another long day at the docks,” Valkyrie said, dropping a bag full of supplies on Loki’s kitchen table. 

“I’m not sure ‘entertainment’ really applies here,” Loki said.

“You’ll play, won’t you, Your Majesty?” Korg said.

“How many times do I have to tell you,” Loki started, just as Valkyrie said, “I would, Korg, but I’ve only got a few minutes.”

Korg looked between them with wide eyes. “That was a bit weird, yeah? I feel like there’s got to be some tension going on after that. Just reading the room.”

“Not at all,” Loki said. “So your roommate’s named Meek, was it?”

-

“Loki!” Bruce said, throwing his arms wide and beaming. “It’s good to see you, man!”

“Hello, beast,” Loki said, tilting his head. “Done much smashing lately?”

“Arsehole,” Valkyrie muttered.

“Nah, I’m out of the game,” Bruce said. “I mostly do speaking engagements and some consulting work these days.”

Loki, who was clearly extraordinarily baffled and desperate for it not to show, said, “Really. Speaking engagements. Well, your diction has certainly improved.”

“Thanks, man,” Bruce said cheerfully, and Valkyrie was _so_ glad she hadn’t mentioned his evolution to Loki, who looked very much like he’d put something disgusting in his mouth but was too well-bred to spit it out. “So Valkyrie told me you’re not dead! Was Thor pissed? I bet he was pissed.”

“I think I can say that I have tested the boundaries of Thor’s capacity for complex emotions,” Loki said. “Personally, I don’t see how he can claim to be surprised.”

“This wasn’t his first time faking his own death,” Valkyrie translated.

“Wow, really?” Bruce said. “And they believed you every time? See, I tried to fake my own death once, but I must have done it wrong because the military was all over it. Do you guys not have DNA tests?”

Loki blinked. “I don’t believe we do.”

“Well, that helps,” Bruce said. “Anyway, are you staying long?”

“To be determined,” Loki said. 

“Man, look at this! It’s like we’re getting the Revengers back together!” Bruce said. “I wish Thor was here. Think he’ll be swinging by anytime soon?”

“He’s busy cleaning up after his little brother’s messes,” Valkyrie said. “As usual.”

Loki rolled his eyes. “She won’t let it go.”

“Yeah, look, I know we did the whole thing on Sakaar and Asgard and we’re good and all, but I’m not gonna be on your side for this one,” Bruce said. “You know I was there at New York, right?”

“Damn,” Loki said, and snapped his fingers regretfully. “And here I thought we’d all forgotten the part where you nearly caved my head in slamming me around Stark’s penthouse.” 

“You left quite a dent,” Bruce said, and Valkyrie had seen a lot of things in her life but seeing Bruce and Loki look at each other and burst out laughing over some long-gone battle had to be one of the strangest. 

-

Bruce stayed two nights in the only guest room in the village that could accommodate him, and after he left Valkyrie took a flagon of ale up to Loki’s house and knocked on the door.

When Loki opened it, he was wearing plaid pajama pants and a black t-shirt that said _Flogging Molly_. “The regalia isn’t exactly easy to launder,” he muttered when he caught her staring.

He pulled two mugs out of the cabinet and set them on the table, and she filled them each to the brim. “To Asgard,” she said.

Loki paused. “To Asgard,” he repeated, and drank deeply. “So, have you poisoned me?”

“Oh, I’d never resort to poison if I wanted to kill you,” Valkyrie said, and smiled. 

Loki chuckled. “Too subtle?”

“Too boring,” she said. “I’m surprised you got along so well with Bruce.”

“So am I, considering that I tried to kill him,” Loki said. “He seems to have an unusual capacity to understand other people’s sides.” Loki took another careful sip. “Or maybe he just understands what it’s like to be a monster.”

Valkyrie raised her eyebrows and drained her glass before pouring them each another. “Why’d you fake your death again?”

“How long have you been waiting to ask that?”

“Just answer the question.”

Loki rolled his eyes. “You do know _Thanos_ had it out for me, right? And I don’t mean in the general way that he had it out for everyone - I mean me, specifically.”

“All right, but that had been true for years,” Valkyrie said. “What made you do it right then, at that moment?”

“I knew he would win,” Loki said. “I always knew he would win. Maniacs often do, because they don’t stop when sane men would throw in the towel.”

“So you figured you’d help him along.”

“No,” Loki said, sharply. “I _never_ wanted him to - when I took the Tesseract back I thought I would be keeping it from him. And when he showed up I knew either I could give it to him and die, or give it to him and live. You can’t expect me to apologize for making the choice I did.”

He lifted his drink to his lips and took a long draught, his face obscured behind the glass.

“No,” Valkyrie said slowly. “I can’t. But you could have revealed yourself to Thor. He would have been happy to have you around, afterwards. He lost everything, you know.”

“Well, he wasn’t the only one,” Loki said. “He was fine. He didn’t need me.”

“He kind of did, though,” Valkyrie said, as it all clicked into place. “But you preferred to die with his respect rather than live long enough to lose it all over again.”

Loki sipped his ale. “Taken up amateur psychology alongside your royal title, have you?” 

“Maybe I just understand what it’s like to be a monster,” Valkyrie said. “Or at least think you are.”

“It’s very charming of you to act like you understand me,” Loki said.

“I’m not trying to act like I understand you, I’m trying to act like I might like to,” Valkyrie said.

They stared at each other for a long, quiet minute. Finally, Loki leaned back in his seat. “Well, if that’s concluded, I think I’ll go do something less excruciating than this. Like playing Fortnite with Korg.”

“You’re going to be terrible at it,” Valkyrie said. “Real world fighting skills don’t translate in the slightest.”

“What a shame,” Loki said, and they drank the rest of the flagon in silence.

-

“Dinner plans?”

Loki looked up from where he was scrubbing his hands in the stone sink out in front of the fishery. “Pardon?”

“Have you got any?” Valkyrie clarified.

“Er, no,” Loki said. “No, I think there might be a spot in my packed social calendar.”

“Come to my place,” Valkyrie said. “I made too much stew and I don’t like it enough to eat every night for a week.”

“Well, how could I turn down an invite like that,” Loki drawled, but he showed up right on time, and with a flagon of mead, too, like a real guest. Frigga raised him right in some ways, apparently, Valkyrie thought as she spooned stew onto his plate.

“So how are things going?” she asked as Loki took a careful bite.

He swallowed. “Pardon?”

“For you,” she clarified. “You’re settling in okay?”

Loki blinked at her. “I suppose so.”

“Nobody giving you too much trouble?”

“No?” Loki said. “Sorry, why do you care?”

“Because Thor put me in charge of you,” Valkyrie said. 

“He did not,” Loki began, “put you in _charge_ of - ”

“And because there aren’t that many of us left and we have to look out for each other,” she finished. “Most of the Asgardians left in the galaxy are right here in this village. We’re all we have left. And like it or not, you’re one of us.”

Loki picked up his napkin and dabbed at the corner of his lips. “Well, you won’t need to worry after my well-being for long. I expect I’ll be out of your hair before long.”

“I expect you will,” Valkyrie said. “And I expect you’ll be back in it again, too. You may not want to, but you’ll always be able to come back to us. Long as you’re done trying to take over the throne and mind controlling Midgardians and conspiring with murderous megalomaniacs, that is.”

“I’ll try to control myself,” Loki said. 

“Glad to hear it,” Valkyrie said. “So I hear you’ve gotten into Halo.”

“From who?” Loki said, horrified.

“Meek ratted you out.”

“The little bastard,” Loki growled. “I ought to use him for sashimi.”

“See, saying things like that? That’s why you don’t get more dinner invitations.”

“Oh, come on, I was obviously joking. Who would I play Halo with if I ate him?”

-

Valkyrie arrived at Loki’s hut one evening with a flagon of mead to find it empty. 

She stopped by Korg’s place and found him and Meek asleep with an empty box of pizza still open between them on the sofa. She poked her head into the village’s one pub, where Loki occasionally played chess with one of the elders, and found everyone gathered around the telly watching a rugby match. Loki had deemed rugby “needlessly brutal”, which, look, you could go _several_ rounds with him on the meaning of irony on that one; either way, he wasn’t there. She even went down to the docks to see if the nighttime crew had seen him, or perhaps “accidentally” knocked him into the ocean. 

And then, with a sigh, she hopped on her motorcycle and headed to the nearest Midgardian town.

They knew her at the pub, because she ordered the village’s beer from them and sometimes stopped by to shoot the shit with the bartender, who had a lot of opinions on women’s football and an impressive collection of nicely-fitting flannels. The woman waved at her when she walked in, but Valkyrie’s eye was caught by another familiar figure at a table in the corner: lean, raven-haired, and decidedly feminine. 

_Oh, the son of a bitch_ , she thought.

A tinkling laugh echoed through the room as she approached, and the black-haired woman leaned toward her tablemate, putting a well-manicured hand on his arm. “Oh, Lars,” she said, “you’re so - _oh_.”

“Hello,” Valkyrie said, smiling at the woman as her green eyes widened slightly. “Funny seeing you here.” 

“It is, isn’t it,” Loki said, her red-lipped mouth twisting. “Lars, dear, excuse me a moment, will you?”

She stood up and followed Valkyrie to the bar. “Two shots of whisky, please,” she said to the bartender. “ _Don’t_ say anything,” she said, just as Valkyrie opened her mouth.

“All I was going to do was ask you where you get your lipstick,” Valkyrie said. “I told you to stay away from the Midgardians.” 

“What’s the harm? They know we’re here,” Loki said. “And I’m so _bored_. It’s not like I was going to hurt them.”

“Only break a few hearts, hm?”

“Spare me the judgment,” Loki said, rolling her eyes. “Just because you’re the king doesn’t mean you have to be _exactly_ like my brother.”

“Oh, it’s not judgment,” Valkyrie said. She leaned in close to Loki’s ear. “It’s just that if you wanted to get fucked, you needn’t go so far from home.”

Loki froze.

“You disobeyed a direct order from your king,” Valkyrie continued. “You’ve been a very, very bad girl. Do you know what happens to bad girls in my kingdom? They get _spanked_.”

Loki raised her eyebrows and turned back to the bar. “Make it four shots, would you?”

-

Several hours later, Loki - back to male now after various configurations, including some Valkyrie hadn’t been familiar with - rolled away, breathing heavily. “Well,” he said, “I’m glad we got that out of our system.”

“Definitely for the best,” Valkyrie said, stretching her arms above her head with a yawn. “Listen, you really can’t go around seducing Midgardian blokes in town. We promised to leave them alone - no magic, no weird space stuff, nothing. We’ve got a good thing going here.”

“I know,” Loki said, actually sounding a touch contrite, which was either a miracle or a feat of profoundly impressive acting. 

Valkyrie climbed out of bed and got a new pair of underwear from her drawer; the last were ruined beyond repair. “Next time you want to put on your heels and lipstick, we’ll go out in Oslo or Bergen. That way, they won’t know who we are and start bugging me about where the lovely green-eyed woman ran off to. Deal?”

“If I must,” Loki said. 

“Good,” Valkyrie said. “D’you want a sandwich?”

“Odin’s tits, yes,” Loki said, and followed her into the kitchen.

-

“All right. Here’s a good one. Bruce, Korg, and Thor.”

Loki looked scandalized over his plate of marinara. “Thor’s my _brother_.”

“You’re the one who’s always saying you’re adopted!” Valkyrie argued.

“You’re disgusting.”

“ _I’m_ disgusting? I answered yours about Meek, Topaz and Hela.”

“That was a cop-out, Topaz would never let you get close enough to fuck her and you know it,” Loki said.

“I feel like you should have set some ground rules, if you felt so strongly about it,” Valkyrie said. 

“Unbelievable,” Loki said, rolling his eyes. 

-

“I return victorious!” Thor said, bursting into Valkyrie’s living room some weeks later.

Valkyrie and Loki both looked up at him, Valkyrie from where she was sitting on the floor, Loki from where he perched on the sofa behind her, halfway through a complicated french braid.

“Oh,” Loki said. “Have you?” 

Thor grinned at them. “Your debts have been cleared, brother. You can move freely throughout the galaxy.”

“Not while we’re in the middle of _Clueless_ he can’t,” Valkyrie said. “Pass the popcorn?”

“Get it yourself,” Loki muttered as he handed her the bowl. 

“I really thought you’d both be more excited than this,” Thor said, frowning.

“Oh, I am excited, brother,” Loki said. “I’m just also very compelled by Cher’s rotating closet. Do you think we could get one put in here?”

“Which of our two-room huts do you think has space for a walk-in closet?” Valkyrie said. 

Thor thunked down on the sofa and grabbed a heaping handful of popcorn. “Well, I suppose I should be grateful you’re getting along. I honestly wondered if you’d have to fight to the death while I was gone.”

“And which of us did you think would win?” Valkyrie said, turning to stare at him.

“Yes, which?” Loki said eagerly.

Thor looked between them. “You know I’m not going to answer that question.”

“Oh, but it would be _so_ fun,” Valkyrie said. 

-

Thor wanted to catch a few games of Fortnite with Korg and Meek so he told his brother they’d be leaving in the morning - “First thing, Loki, and I _will_ drag you out of bed if I have to, so make sure you leave enough time to do your hair because I don’t want to hear about it all the way to Knowhere” - and when Valkyrie woke up the next morning she found Loki making a pot of coffee in her kitchen.

“I threw away all my creamer when I emptied the ice box,” Loki muttered, watching the coffee drip into the pot.

“Better be enough for me,” Valkyrie said, and got two mugs out of the cupboard.

Loki grunted, but there was, in fact, enough. They sipped their coffee in silence. Outside, it drizzled.

“When do you think you’ll be back?” Valkyrie asked.

“Never, if I can help it,” Loki said, and winced. “Sorry. Instinct.”

Valkyrie snorted. “You don’t _have_ to visit. I can watch shitty Midgardian entertainment on my own.”

“Yes, but you’ll miss the witty commentary terribly,” Loki said. 

“Not terribly,” Valkyrie said. “A bit, maybe.”

“Keep telling yourself that,” Loki said. He poured out the last of his coffee and set the mug in the sink. “Well, I suppose that’s that. Thanks for harboring me as a fugitive.”

“I was essentially forced into it, so don’t be too appreciative,” Valkyrie said. 

Loki stepped up to her, cleared his throat, and held a hand out. “Until next time?”

“Next time you’re on the run? I suppose that’s the best I can expect,” Valkyrie said, and shook his hand. “Until next time.”  


Loki squeezed her hand, then released it. “Your Majesty.”

“Love the sound of that,” Valkyrie said, but the smirk she meant to send him turned into a genuine half-smile, and Loki half-smiled back and headed out to meet Thor, closing the door gently behind him.

Valkyrie picked up her coffee and sank down on the sofa. Well, that was that. It was a relief to be rid of him; Loki was bothersome and a magnet for trouble and a real prat, most of the time. But then, sometimes, when he wasn’t being any of those things (or at least not all of them, all at once) he was kind of… funny. And clever. And almost kind of nice to just, you know, have around, a bit of companionship, almost like a - 

“I forgot my fucking coat,” Loki said, banging the door open so loudly the birds in the trees outside all squawked and flew away.

“On the chair,” Valkyrie said, rolling her eyes. “Why don’t you just pick it up when you inevitably come back in a few months?”

“Piss off,” Loki said, and slammed the door behind him. 


End file.
